Hosea 6:3
One of the greatest stories in the Bible is a love story, and it is a love story where God had directed love toward someone who was very unworthy. By studying the story of Hosea, we can learn God’s attitude and how we can relate to the human situation He uses to teach us a lesson.
Father, bless us. Teach us in Your Word what You think about us and what You want to do for us.
When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, “Go, take to yourself a wife of harlotry, and have children of harlotry; for the land commits flagrant harlotry, forsaking the Lord.” So he went and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son. And the Lord said to him, “Name him Jezreel (Jezreel means “visit the bloodshed of Jezreel on the house of Jehu”); for yet a little while, and I will punish the house of Jehu for the bloodshed of Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel. And it will come about that on that day, that I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel.”
Then she conceived again and gave birth to a daughter. And the Lord said to him, “Name her Lo-ruhamah (meaning “she has not obtained compassion”), for I will no longer have compassion on the house of Israel, that I should ever forgive them. But I will have compassion on the house of Judah and deliver them by the Lord their God, and will not deliver them by bow, sword, battle, horses, or horsemen.”
When she had weaned Lo-ruhamah, she conceived and gave birth to a son. And the Lord said, “Name him Lo-ammi (meaning “not my people”), for you are not My people and I am not your God.” Yet the number of the sons of Israel will be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered; and it will come about that, in the place where it is said to them, “You are not My people,” it will be said to them, “You are the sons of the living God.” Hosea 1:2–10.
This first passage shows us that the whole prophecy of Hosea was an illustration. God was trying to show Israel that she was like a harlot. God had loved Israel very much, and yet she had continually gone after other gods. She had committed the adultery of idolatry, and for this God was going to deal with her.
How would it be to be a man of God, walking with Him as Hosea walked? He is called the prophet of love in the Old Testament as John is called the apostle of love in the New Testament. Hosea was a very loving individual; such individuals generally have a sensitivity about them that is difficult to describe. If he could have accepted the relationship on a natural plane, he probably would not have been disturbed by the fact that Gomer was a harlot. But since he was told by God to love her, I know what went on in the heart of Hosea—he loved her! It was not phony; he loved her sincerely.
He loved her and bore children by her, and God gave the names for the children. Each child born was like a knife in his heart. When one came forth, God said, “Call this one ‘Not mine.’ ” Imagine the role of a father who would have to name his wife’s child “Not mine,” or “No compassion,” “No love,” or “This one born will not be loved.”
The heart of this sensitive prophet is moved as he is living with a very coarse woman, a woman who had no sense of loyalty or dedication to him. Yet he loved her very much because God had opened Hosea’s heart to love her. Hosea proceeds to do this and God explains what He means when He says, “This is the way that Israel has been to Me! Still, I want everyone to know this prophecy—the number of the sons of Israel will be as the sands of the sea. I shall not forsake her. But where it said, ‘Lo-ammi—you are not Mine,’ now you will be called ‘My people’—I’m going to acknowledge you.”
This story proceeds a little bit further, and I am picking just a few pertinent references from the second chapter. Say to your brothers, “Ammi,” and to your sisters, “Ruhamah.” “Contend with your mother, contend, for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband; and let her put away her harlotry from her face, and her adultery from between her breasts, lest I strip her naked and expose her as on the day when she was born. I will also make her like a wilderness, make her like a desert land, and slay her with thirst.
Also I will have no compassion on her children, because they are children of harlotry. For their mother has played the harlot; she who conceived them has acted shamefully. For she said, ‘I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.’ Therefore, behold, I will hedge up her way with thorns, and I will build a wall against her so that she cannot find her paths. And she will pursue her lovers, but she will not overtake them; and she will seek them, but will not find them. Then she will say, ‘I will go back to my first husband, for it was better for me then than now!’ ” Hosea 2:1–7.
This is exactly what happens. Gomer is like one who is rejected and she leaves. She thinks, “I can still make my way.” Of course in those days, the harlot was paid off not by coins, but in “bread, water, wool, flax, oil, and wine.” These were the things that she would receive for her harlotry. But as she goes forth, God brings even the emptiness of what she pursued to her. Finally she says, “I’ll go back to my husband, because it was better for me then than now.” It is a tragic thing.
Keep in mind that Hosea is such a picture of the Lord. The Lord is saying, “This is what I have to contend with. I have loved My people. I have done wonderful things for them. But they still feel that they would be better off if they forsake the loyalty and the faithfulness to the Lord, and pursue after something else, if they go after their own ambitions and after their own lusts.” Yet God always stands ready. When they have run their course, they will say, “It is an empty thing,” and come back. He will receive them.
Traditionally, adultery has always been probably as common a cause for divorce and separation, for love to die, as anything else. As long as there is a loyalty and faithfulness, a marriage can exist strong, even without very much love. But when the loyalty and the faithfulness is broken, then the couple had better love each other very much because their marriage is in trouble. It is best, of course, when they are loyal and faithful, and they love each other. But if the love grows dim, if it never was there in the first place, or they found that they were not as dedicated to each other as they thought, yet that marriage can be blessed if there is an integrity and a loyalty to it. It has to be expressed in a way that is unique to every marriage, but it has to be there.
Imagine what God has to put up with when He finds people who want to run their course, be disloyal and unfaithful to Him, and then come back to Him. They find that He is still ready to receive them, even though they feel, “Well, I am in such trouble I would be better off to go back to the Lord.” How many people have done that! After they first lived for God, they left to live for Satan with all their hearts and, finding it a miserable life, they said, “I cannot bear this. The way of the transgressor is just too hard.” They came back to the Lord because it seemed to be a lesser problem for them to serve the Lord than to be under the penalty of sin. Have you ever stopped to think of it from God’s viewpoint and what it must mean to Him? It is a great tragedy.
Before we get into the third chapter, I’d like to talk to you a little bit about people. It is said that men are more polygamic than women. In other words, a woman tends to choose one mate and live with him more often than a man does. A man is more apt, even in the midst of many good situations, to look around and try to find some other woman; he has a roving eye for another mate besides his wife. But I think because a woman becomes an extension of a man, it is more difficult for him to live with unfaithfulness in his wife than it is for a wife to live with unfaithfulness found in her husband’s actions.
A woman may feel very deeply about her husband’s unfaithfulness, but she seems to have some capacity to forgive and go on. But the man finds it very difficult, first of all because he is shattered in something that he cannot even understand himself. He may have been guilty of the same conduct, but he cannot find it in his heart to accept that kind of conduct in a woman. He would walk away from a woman who did the same thing that he would tend to excuse in himself or cover up in his own life.
This is because the man’s role has been to take a woman and make her a very part of his own life. A woman’s life is very much controlled by the husband she chooses, more so than a man’s life is controlled by the wife he chooses. Yet in the midst of all that a woman is able to keep her identity. By putting walls up against a situation that she cannot handle, she can remain in a terrible situation and go on with it, where a man cannot. Very few women ever commit suicide because their husbands were unfaithful, but it is common for a man to kill himself over the fact that his wife has betrayed him.
The story of Gomer and Hosea is wrapped around this deep mystery of relationships between a husband and wife; their unfaithfulness and faithfulness. God picked one of the most tender, intimate things that can happen to individuals to prove one thing. He said, “I suffer when My people are unfaithful to Me, when they are disloyal to Me. Yet I am married to the backslider. I am married to the spiritual adulterer who loves the world, who loves everything else more.”
The Bible reads, If any one loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. I John 2:15, 16. There is a fickleness that causes people to waver until their loyalty and dedication to God is not constant. God desires that loyalty and faithfulness. God’s people must have grieved Him very much in the past. How wounded He must be with every inconstancy in our lives! But we never think of that. We come and say, “Lord, I have sinned, forgive me.” Yet the Lord is after something more.
It could be described by a couple who loved each other very much. They were not able to get married because God has not opened the door to it yet. But as I talked with them, one remark impressed me. The woman said she did not want to be with the man just in lust, but “All I really want is to be with him twenty-four hours a day.” That is very impressive. The loyalty, the faithfulness, the constancy was there. “I just want to be with him twenty-four hours a day.” And that is all the Lord wants of you, too. He does not want much; He just wants you twenty-four hours a day! All He wants is for you to walk with Him twenty-four hours a day, to have no other loves, no other loyalties, to be devoted to no other thing but Him.
Let’s go on and read this story. Then the Lord said to me, “Go, again love a woman who is loved by her husband, yet an adulteress, even as the Lord loves the sons of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love raisin cakes.” (Now this is not anything against raisins. The raisin cakes it refers to are those related to idol worship, part of the participation in the ritual of it.)
So I bought her for myself for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and a half of barley. Then I said to her, “You shall stay with me for many days. You shall not play the harlot, nor shall you have a man; so I will also be toward you.” For the sons of Israel will remain for many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred pillar, and without ephod or household idols. Afterward the sons of Israel will return and seek the Lord their God and David their king; and they will come trembling to the Lord and to His goodness in the last days. Hosea 3:1–5.
What God says He is going to do is illustrated here. Gomer had gone out to be the harlot again, and (to make a modern comparison) she was under the control of a pimp. A pimp is one who watches over one or more prostitutes and a great deal of their gain from the harlotry goes to him. Consequently, he controls a great deal of the woman. In ancient times, this was even more so. A woman was almost like a slave if she became a harlot. This is what happened to Gomer. God told Hosea, “Go, again love a woman…” It is not brought out in this translation as it should be. “You go get the woman again. Go to the pimp who is controlling her and selling her out in harlotry as a prostitute and buy her back.” And the sensitive prophet of love, Hosea, does just that.
Why would God order a man to do such a thing? Hosea does not question that—he loves the Lord too much. God is preaching an illustrated sermon! One of the sixty-six books in the Bible was written because God put a sensitive, tenderhearted man through a hell on earth. And he went through it so that God could teach people, “This is the way I react to you. This is the way that I love you! I am married to the backslider.” It must be such an affront to God. You may be sinning against Him in a great way, but when you are, remember, He still loves you, and if you repent, He will receive you back again.
Then Hosea tells Gomer, “There will not be any more of this. Your harlotry is ended. In due time you will come back to me and be pure.” This has a prophetic significance because the last verse reads, “They will come trembling to the Lord and to His goodness in the last days” (Hosea 3:5b). God is referring to how the Church of Jesus Christ has been Babylon the harlot throughout all these centuries. But in the last days, God’s people will come back to Him; they will be pure, they will be redeemed, and the Lord will receive them back again and they will love Him. We may have been a part of Babylon the whore at one time, but now we are going to be the Bride of the Lord Jesus Christ without spot or wrinkle. We will be His true love; faithful, loyal, and dedicated to Him.
In all His dealings with us, He has brought us to the place where we love the loyalty and the purity to Christ above everything else. We find in this day that it is not just blessings we are after; we really want to be what the Lord wants us to be. We are more concerned about what we become than about what we do or what we receive. We are concerned with what we are becoming—it preoccupies all our attention to be the Bride without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but to be holy and without blemish before the Lord (Ephesians 5:27). This has preoccupied our time, our thought, and our attention.
What a beautiful story the book of Hosea tells. In this last passage, Hosea 6:1–3, it is the cry of Gomer in the analogy, but it is really our cry as we have wandered so far from Him. “Come, let us return to the Lord. For He has torn us, but He will heal us; He has wounded us, but He will bandage us. He will revive us after two days; He will raise us up on the third day that we may live before Him. So let us know, let us press on to know the Lord. His going forth is as certain as the dawn; and He will come to us like the rain, like the spring rain watering the earth.” Hosea 6:1–3.
The picture is much deeper than what we have usually seen in this passage. You have to see the rest of the book that has come before, then you can understand that passage … let us press on to know the Lord. The word “know” is a word used in the Old Testament concerning intercourse between a man and a woman. In the Garden of Eden, “Adam knew his wife and she conceived and bore a son” (Genesis 4:1). Throughout the Scriptures, this term is used many times, especially in the King James Version. It is fairly accurate—a man would know his wife. It did not say he had intercourse with her because God is trying to reveal something of a relationship between a husband and a wife that has to be understood.
Every husband and wife knows what He is trying to say. In the relationship, it is more than sex—it is coming to really know each other. It is more than a physical intimacy; that can take place with strangers who do not know each other. But there is a knowledge that comes when you know the other person—you have compassion; you try to please him. In your heart there is a loyalty to him. There is a dedication in your relationship that is very deep. That is what it is referring to. Then shall we know, if we follow on the know the Lord. Hosea 6:3, KJV. We will come into that most intimate of relationships that exists between the Bridegroom and the Bride. We will come to know Him even as He knows us. We will come to have a relationship that is based upon a mutual loyalty and a dedication.
If we could only know what the Lord is trying to do with us. It is not a casual following after the Lord. This is not a casual flirtation between the Lord and us; it is a marriage that will last for at least a thousand, million, trillion, billion years—a long time! I do not know what the Lord will do to your heart with this message. But again and again He keeps speaking to bring forth the desire for purity and real dedication to the Lord Himself. All He is asking is “Love me with all your heart. I am married to you!”
Comment: “I had three thoughts going through my mind in this message. first, my relationship with my wife; second, my relationship with God; and third, my relationship as a pastor to my flock. In all three cases, whenever there was a betrayal of any kind, no matter how great or how small it was, there was a withdrawal within my spirit. If I betrayed the Lord or if I betrayed anyone with a word of criticism in anyway, I withdrew.
“This thing had to come into my spirit of wanting to return. I began to think. Many times when we think we are cut off from Brother Stevens or cut off with God, it is that little betrayal in our hearts that cuts us off. That little fornication comes in. It is not that the Father has betrayed us, but we have betrayed the Father. We should never feel at any time that the Father has betrayed us, our apostle or our pastor has betrayed us. If we dig deeply in our heart, we will find the real betrayal comes because we were critical of our Father, we were critical of our apostle or our pastor.
“The beautiful thing about it is, ‘Let us return unto the Lord.’ I have always found that true in this ministry; we have been able to return unto the Lord.”